A sacred idea may be throned within the heart and "cherished with such fervency of regard, with such reverence of affection, as the devout anchorite more unreasonably pays to those sainted reliques that constitute the object of his adoration"

"With these grave fops, whose system seems / To give up certainty for dreams / The eye of man is understood / As for no other purpose good / Than as a door, through which, of course, / Their passage crowding objects force; / A downright usher, to admit / New-comers to the court of Wit."

"Each nobler aim, repressed by long control, / Now sinks at last or feebly mans the soul; / While low delights, succeeding fast behind, / In happier meanness occupy the mind: / As in those domes, where Caesars once bore sway, / Defaced by time and tottering in decay, / There in the ruin, heedless...

"Wisdom, which men with so much pain, / With so much weariness attain, / May in a little moment quit, / And abdicate the throne of Wit, / And leave, a vacant seat, the brain, / For Folly to usurp and reign."

"While awake, and in health, this busy principle [the imagination] cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood."